Ten years ago, David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington as a place where people could come together to create a stronger, more inclusive, more connected region. Let's kick off the next decade with a bang and wrap up our reader drive Wednesday, March 14 from 6:30 to 9 pm at the Apollo on H Street in DC.

Join Greater Greater Washington staff, contributors, readers, and supporters for an evening of drinks, snacks, and conversation in the lobby of the Apollo, a new apartment building overlooking the H Street corridor located at 600 H Street NE. (You may know it as home to the new H Street Whole Foods.) We'll have food catered by Po Boy Jim's and drinks from a local brewery.

We'll also have speakers from DC, Maryland, and Virginia give a few words — as well as a special surprise.

The Apollo is located about a 15-minute walk from both Union Station and the NoMa-Gallaudet Metro station, both on the Red Line. You can also take the DC Streetcar from to 5th and H streets NE, one block away. The Metrobus X1/X2 stop at 6th and H, the X9 and 90s buses stop at 8th and H, and there's a Capitol Bikeshare station right across the street.

If you're picking a place to live, it often means comparing the schools in different neighborhoods. How can you find the right school for your family? This video shows you how. It emphasizes Montgomery County, but the advice is universal.

Recently, I interviewed Montgomery County board of education member Jill Ortman-Fouse about the best tools for learning about local public schools. While websites like GreatSchools.com assign each school a point rating based on test scores, they don't tell the full story.

Instead, Ortman-Fouse recommends taking a more hands-on approach. If you're curious about a school, schedule a visit, meet with the principal, or talk to neighbors whose kids attend that school. There are also a variety of online resources, including school websites, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages, that list events going on at each school and can provide a first-hand look at what happens there.

Of course, Montgomery County Public Schools has a website with lots of information as well. Schools at a Glance is their annual report of data about every school in the system, with everything from test scores to teacher statistics to building information.

Are you trying to pick a school in Montgomery County right now? Have you picked one in the past? What tools did you use?

Just in time for this year’s elections, Montgomery County has a new LGBTQ political organization. Here’s why I’m hoping that the newly-formed Queer Democrats will look at access to housing and transportation.

I first came out in 2005. If you had told me then that today gay marriage would be legal in all 50 states, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would be repealed, and Virginia would elect a trans woman to the state legislature, I’d have said you were dreaming. Even with the 2016 presidential election, queer people have made tremendous strides. However, these things don’t guarantee that queer people can make a life for themselves.

Writing in Slate, my friend and New York activist Andrea Bowen cited a study that trans people there are consistently poorer and face more food insecurity than their cisgender counterparts. “You can ban certain types of discrimination,” she writes, “but that doesn’t mean an oppressed population’s access to the things that make life good — say, food, income, or medical care — is actually going to improve.”

There are challenges that LGBTQ people face across the United States in finding work, finding economic stability, or finding a stable place to live:

When queer people do find jobs, they get paid less than their straight counterparts. Gay men earn 10 to 32 percent less than their straight counterparts, and are more likely to be penalized for not being discreet about it (such as announcing that they live with a same-sex partner). Ironically, the income gap is largest in high-paying, prestigious jobs, not unlike those you’d find here in the DC area.

As a result, queer people are more likely to face economic insecurity. It’s hard to keep a job when you don’t have a stable place to live (or vice versa). Twenty percent of LGBT people (and one-third of trans people) around the US live below the poverty level, compared to just 17 percent of single straight people. Over a quarter of queer people faced food insecurity in 2015.

This is something local governments can help solve

Economic insecurity isn’t an exclusively queer issue, but addressing it is an opportunity to make a huge difference in the lives of queer people. It’s also something that local governments are uniquely suited to tackle.

For instance, Montgomery County, like most local jurisdictions, is in charge of land use (aka where and how you can build housing) and transportation. Research shows that access to reliable, fast transportation is the leading indicator of getting ahead. For LGBTQ people who disproportionately face economic and social hardships, where you live and what jobs you can get to are crucial for your ability to live a good life.

For example, here’s a map of commute times in Montgomery County. Not surprisingly, commute times are shortest around Bethesda, the county’s largest job center, and higher basically everywhere else.

“That LGBT people face these higher rates of disadvantage means the national lack of affordable housing specifically harms LGBT individuals,” writes Brooke Williams from the Century Foundation in a report about housing for queer people.

That’s why the Century Foundation recommends getting rid of exclusionary zoning policies that basically outlaw affordable and middle-class housing in many neighborhoods, including much of Montgomery County. Building more transit, like the Purple Line and BRT, will also have a huge impact on economically disadvantaged queer people by giving them better access to jobs.

These protesters say there's a "war on suburbia."
Image by Sonya Burke used with permission.

The language that many opponents use echoes the arguments made against gay marriage in recent years: that their "way of life" is being attacked, that they'll be coerced to do things against their will, or that a person's desire to live differently than someone else is somehow invalid or fraudulent.

Take the claim that Montgomery County was waging “war on suburbia” by allowing the construction of apartments and townhouses in Bethesda's Westbard neighborhood, or that it would “destroy” the local culture and endanger the ability of people to raise children. Or the argument made by one neighbor in Silver Spring that plans to build a town center in White Oak was part of a plot to force people to quit their jobs and become a barista.

Ironically, some of these people may identify as progressives, support progressive causes, and may even support LGBTQ causes. Yet the impulse to keep change out of their backyard ultimately harms disadvantaged people. After all, people who can afford to drive will continue to drive for lack of other options, and people who can afford to pay top-dollar for a home won’t really be affected by a dearth of housing.

However, a lot of people will lose out in this situation, especially anyone with a history of facing prejudice or economic disadvantage. Like I said, this isn't an exclusively queer problem, but it's one that queer people and allies should pay attention to.

If you'd like to hear more, come see me speak at the newly-formed Queer Democrats of Montgomery County at their monthly meeting this Monday, January 29 at 7 pm in Kensington. For more information, visit their Facebook page.

Top image: A pride flag outside a suburban house (though not in Montgomery County). Image by mary licensed under Creative Commons.

To get there, you can take the Green line to the College Park-U of Md Metro station, which is a 13-minute walk away. Metrobus routes 83 and 86 and The Bus route 17 stop one block away at Baltimore Avenue and Knox Road, and the C2, C8, F6, and J4 stop on the University of Maryland campus a 10-minute walk away. If you're a member of mBike, College Park's bikesharing system, there's a dock across the street.

As house prices around Washington have risen over the past few years, everyone from friends to real estate agents offer the same advice: “Have you considered a cheaper area?” However, this advice really only works for an individual person looking for a house. Applied to an entire city, county, or region, this advice doesn’t work very well.

Last week, candidates for Montgomery County executive spoke to the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors, a group that represents real estate agents in the county and the District of Columbia. (Full disclosure: I am a member of GCAAR, though I didn’t attend the event.) As David Alpert wrote last week, each of the candidates were asked where they’d recommend a young couple making $100,000 per year should live in the county. Two of the candidates, Roger Berliner and David Blair, suggested that they look at Silver Spring or Wheaton.

Would our hypothetical couple actually be able to do that? $100,000 seems like a lot of money and it is, though it’s actually a little lower than the county’s median household income of $100,352 per year. But what can they actually afford here?

Does this advice work?

A couple making $100,000 per year makes about $8,333 per month in monthly income before taxes. Most lenders require that homebuyers spend no more than 36 percent of their income on debt, and will subtract any other debts from that amount to get their mortgage payment. (That percentage is higher for government-backed FHA loans.) They’re just out of school, so let’s assume they each have $351 a month in student loan debt, which is the national average.

That leaves a monthly payment of $2,250. Assuming they can produce a down payment of $20,000 (or five percent of the purchase price), they could afford a home of about $400,000. That’s just below the county’s median home value of $420,000, according to Bright MLS, the region's multiple listing service.

A map of which zip codes have more homes for sale under $400,000. Data from Bright MLS. Image by the author.

And here’s where that advice works out: as of January 17, 2018, there are 389 homes in Montgomery County priced below $400,000 and with two or more bedrooms. Seventy-five of those homes, or about one out of five, are in zip code 20906, which (depending on who you ask) is part of Silver Spring, Wheaton, or neither. The Glenmont Metro station is at the very southern edge of this zip code, so most homes here aren't close enough to walk to it.

Meanwhile, all of the other zip codes with a bunch of homes our hypothetical couple could afford are all in the Upcounty, further from jobs and other amenities. Zip code 20874 (Germantown) has 39 listings in their range, while zip code 20886 (Montgomery Village) has 35. Gaithersburg zip code 20878 has 25, while 20871 (Clarksburg) has 17.

What if our hypothetical buyers wanted to look inside the Beltway? They’d still have a few choices. Zip code 20910 (downtown Silver Spring) has eight homes under $400,000, while 20814 (downtown Bethesda) has ten homes. 20902 (Wheaton and Forest Glen) has fourteen homes under $400,000. It's worth noting that most of these homes are condos.

If I were working with one couple looking for one house, this would be great! They’d have a few choices of different neighborhoods and home styles and likely be able to find something that meets their needs.

A graph of homes currently for sale in Montgomery County under $400,000, arranged by zip code. Data from Bright MLS. Image by the author.

That said, much of the county would be off-limits to them. Most zip codes have only a handful of homes our couple could afford, and several have just one or two. Yet those are the areas that are close to transit, jobs, and sought-after schools.

And of course, there isn’t just one couple, but thousands looking for a home in this price range. Many of them are currently renting in the county, but not everyone wants to do that forever. Their income is too high to participate in Montgomery County's subsidized housing program. When they’re ready to buy, finding the right home could be a challenge.

Telling people to just live in the less expensive area is problematic

Berliner and Blair presumably recommended Silver Spring or Wheaton because for a long time they’ve been perceived as “more affordable” than the rest of the county. While that may have been the case in the past, the secret’s out: lots of people have already sought out these places because they’re cheaper than the west side of Montgomery County and, increasingly, much of the District.

That demand pushes prices up, and many people who live in Silver Spring or Wheaton today may be pushed out to other, “more affordable” places. I know people who have moved to towns like Hyattsville or Mount Rainier because of this, but they in turn may end up pushing other people out.

Ultimately, the solution is to provide more housing so that people at all income levels can actually have choices for where to live. The Montgomery County Planning Department anticipates that almost 200,000 people will move to the county in the coming decades, and they’ll need 83,000 new homes. Jeannette Chapman, researcher at the Stephen S. Fuller institute at George Mason University, notes that most of those homes will need to be affordable to working- and middle-class households.

This is what our candidates for County Executive, County Council, and other local offices need to be talking about. As a real estate agent, I can tell you that your best bet might be the cheaper area next to the area you’d like in. However, if you’re an elected official, we need a vision for providing more homes.

Top image: Wheaton may be more affordable than other parts of Montgomery County, but it's not guaranteed to stay that way. Image by the author.

Tuesday's announcement that Discovery Communications plans to close and sell its headquarters is a huge blow to Silver Spring, whose revitalization Discovery helped kickstart 20 years ago.

Discovery, which operates TV channels such as TLC, Animal Planet, and OWN, currently employs about 1,300 people at its headquarters, which occupies a giant city block across the street from the Silver Spring Metro station and is known for its iconic Shark Week-themed displays. It’ll move their global headquarters to New York, while their US headquarters will go to Knoxville, Tennessee, home to Scripps Networks, which Discovery agreed to purchase last year.

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett said in a statement that the county and state of Maryland sought to keep Discovery in the area: “The County and State made a substantial proposal designed to accommodate Discovery’s challenges. Together, we were ready to provide considerable incentives to retain their presence in the County. I know this was a tough decision for Discovery. I respect the contributions Discovery has made over the last 15 years to Silver Spring and Montgomery County. We will miss them.”

A spark for redevelopment

Almost since its inception in 1985, Discovery was based in Montgomery County, originally on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda. In the 1990s, Montgomery County was trying to find a way to revitalize downtown Silver Spring, which had been struggling for decades due to white flight and disinvestment. The county had entertained multiple proposals to build a megamall on four city blocks bounded by Georgia Avenue, Wayne Avenue, and Colesville Road, including one from the developers of the Mall of America.

That plan fell through in 1996. Two years later, the county agreed to clear the land and give it to Discovery for a new headquarters, along with $10 million in tax subsidies. Montgomery County condemned several public streets and relocated many businesses, including the iconic Tastee Diner, which was put on the back of a truck and shifted a few blocks away. In 1998, Discovery began work on its new headquarters, a $165 million, 10-story tower.

The building anchored a larger redevelopment project, including an outdoor shopping center, a public plaza and town hall, and new homes. When it opened in 2003, county leaders boasted that Discovery could make Silver Spring the “Burbank of the East Coast,” citing the California city home to several media companies. The American Film Institute located a block away, and together with Discovery sponsored an annual film festival, Silverdocs. Radio One, a network of black-owned TV and radio stations, moved in across the street. Discovery acquired a second building on nearby Kennett Street to hold more workers.

Suddenly, a place Washington City Paper had dubbed a “vivid picture of urban splatter” had become a new hot spot. Local restaurants boasted of increased foot traffic from employees. Video and recording companies settled in the area to support the growing media hub. Local filmmaker Walter Gottlieb even created a comedy webseries,The Videomakers, about the employees of a fictionalized version of the Discovery Channel.

A diminishing presence

Within a few years, Silver Spring’s goal of becoming a media cluster was fizzling out as DC’s own revitalization continued. In 2008, NPR considered moving from Mount Vernon Square to Silver Spring, but decided to stay in the District. Montgomery County Councilmember (and current County Executive candidate) Marc Elrich opposed it, saying, “I’m opposed to pulling businesses out of the District.” In 2013, Discovery pulled its sponsorship of Silverdocs, and AFI moved most of the film festival to venues in DC.

Discovery was having troubles of its own, laying off workers and moving some functions to New York. In 2017, after buying Scripps, Discovery moved its workers out of the Kennett Street building, and received $1 million in tax incentives from Montgomery County and Maryland to renovate its headquarters. (Part of that was a loan that had not yet been disbursed, a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Commerce told Washingtonian.)

What does this mean for Downtown Silver Spring?

Discovery isn’t the only big organization leaving. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission plans to move its headquarters from downtown Silver Spring to Wheaton. In the short term, these two departures could be a huge blow to Silver Spring restaurants and businesses, who depend on workers for daytime traffic. It might even affect home prices in the surrounding area.

In the long term, Silver Spring is likely to be okay. Large federal agencies are (for now) still located here, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Pharmaceutical company United Therapeutics, whose CEO lives in Silver Spring, has undergone a massive expansion here, and is currently building a new office and lab building dubbed the Unisphere. And with the Fillmore music hall, a newly renovated Ellsworth Place, and a slew of well-regarded restaurants, it’s still a regional destination for shopping and entertainment.

But there is now a big hole in the center of downtown, and it won’t be easy to fill. There aren’t a lot of organizations that can fill a giant, purpose-built office building. It’s also a staggeringly anti-urban building, turning its back on downtown streets with blank walls, a partially above-ground parking garage, and a large park that is often inaccessible to the public. This makes it hard to adapt the building to a different use, like retail or housing.

Discovery’s move also won’t help Montgomery County’s reputation as being unattractive to businesses. It couldn’t compete with New York as a prestigious headquarters location. And County Councilmember Hans Riemer told Bethesda Beat that the “cost of doing business is much higher here than in Tennessee." The county says its plan to replace Discovery is a "work in progress."

In the meantime, Discovery will remain in Silver Spring until next summer. Here’s hoping Chompie the Shark might make one last appearance before heading to New York.

]]>Tue, 09 Jan 2018 21:59:00 +0000Dan Reed (Editorial Board)Here’s why new homes are so expensive — and how we can fix thathttps://ggwash.org/view/65967/heres-why-new-homes-are-so-expensive-and-how-we-can-fix-that
https://ggwash.org/view/65967/heres-why-new-homes-are-so-expensive-and-how-we-can-fix-that

Why do new houses in the Washington area cost as much as they do? One of the biggest factors is the cost of land. There’s a way to fix that problem and make it easier to build more homes on a piece of land — but in most cases it isn’t available.

Let’s do a thought experiment. Say you’re a smalltime developer who builds one-off houses in close-in, established neighborhoods. You’ve got access to a construction loan from a local bank, which you have to pay back in one year — enough time to build the house and sell it.

Here’s what it costs to build a house

You find two lots for sale in Silver Spring, a few blocks off of Georgia Avenue and a short walk to the Metro. The lots are each 11,000 square feet (about a quarter-acre) and listed for $315,000. That’s a lot of money for a piece of land, but this is an increasingly popular area. You notice that a new house on the same street is listed for about $925,000, suggesting you could make a lot of money.

You contract with a local homebuilder, which allows you to pick a house design and have it built on your land. You select a two-story Colonial with four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and 2,400 square feet. The house sells for $280,000, but it comes with pretty basic finishes, and you want to wow your buyers. So you splurge on some upgrades, like stainless steel kitchen appliances, hardwood floors, a finished basement, a deck, and a big front porch, which will help it blend in with its neighbors. It comes to about $350,000.

(Note that this is as close to a wholesale price as you can get. You’re paying for the builder’s materials and labor and some advertising, but it’s still cheaper than buying one of their homes in a subdivision.)

Look at that cutie. Image from Stanley Martin Homes.

So far you’re out $665,000, but that’s not all. First, you have to get permits to build the house, and there are many. The building permit is $0.71 per square foot (or $1700 total for the house, and $280 for a detached garage). A deck permit costs $180, while a fence permit is $72. A driveway permit costs $150 plus 14.65 percent of the project cost. We’re anticipating about $3,000 in fees.

There are also “impact taxes,” which Montgomery County charges new development to help pay for infrastructure, like roads and schools to serve the new house. Together, that’s about $40,000.

Next, you have to clear the lot, preparing it for construction, and make sure it’s connected to water lines, sewer lines, and electricity. That’s about $2 per square foot, or $22,000. And once the house is finished, you’ll need to put in a driveway, lay down sod, and do some landscaping, which will cost about $20,000.

Now your house is built, and you’re out about $750,000.

Profit margins are slimmer than you might think

If you can sell your house for $925,000, that’s…$175,000 in profit, right? Sweet!

Nope. You want to hire a real estate agent to sell and market the house, and as the seller you’re responsible for paying their fees and the fees of the agent who brings the buyers. That’s six percent of the eventual sale price of the house, or about $55,500. You’ll also need to pay for closing costs, which are about two percent of the house price, or $18,500.

On top of that, you have to pay back the construction loan. Your lender required you to make a 20 percent down payment, or $144,000, so you owe the bank $576,000. On that amount, you had to make monthly payments to cover interest (about 10 percent), taxes, and home insurance, which comes out to about $3,000/month, or $36,000 for the year. In addition, let’s say your investor friend gave you $50,000 to help with the down payment, and you promised her eight percent interest, which is another $4,000.

You’re now out $864,000. If this house sells for $925,000, you could make a profit of $61,000. But that’s a big "if."

Your agent looks up the comparable sales for your neighborhood and finds that there were four other houses in a similar price range, all of which sold below asking. That house down the street that listed for $925,000 has since sold for $850,000.

How? There are plenty of people who’d like to live in Silver Spring, but not enough homes for them, and prices are rising as a result. However, that demand isn’t the same in every price range, especially for homes over $800,000. Those homes tend to sit on the market for a little longer than cheaper homes, and often sell for less than the asking price.

Suddenly, your sure deal looks risky. If you can get $850,000 for your house, you’ll lose $12,000. So you price it at $925,000, hope for the best, and wait.

What if you built two houses instead?

Noting that homes under $800,000 sell faster, you wonder how you could sell the house for $725,000 and still come out ahead. You remember that the house itself cost $350,000, but the land it sits on cost nearly as much. What if the land was cheaper? You may not be able to convince the land’s owner to sell it for less money. But if you built two houses on the land, you could cut the cost of the land in half.

Here’s how that looks:

$350,000 per house

$40,000 per house in fees

$157,500 for the land (that’s $315,000 divided by two)

$11,000 per house for site work

$15,000 per house for landscaping and a driveway

$58,000 per house for realtor fees and closing costs

That comes out to $631,500. But you have to take out a construction loan for two houses, and instead ask two investor friends for $50,000 each, again at 8 percent interest. That means $28,000 per house in monthly payments, and $4,000 per house in interest. Now you’re out $663,500.

If you priced each house at $725,000, you could make a cool $123,000. Even if each house sold below your asking price, your chances of coming out ahead are greater, since you have two chances to profit. And potential homebuyers have slightly more options they might be able to afford.

Or four houses?

Newly confident, you wonder if you could get that price even lower, say to $550,000, which could attract a lot of homebuyers. The land is the one cost you can change, so what if you managed to fit four houses on the land, say by attaching them to one another as a group of townhouses?

Here’s how that looks:

$300,000 per house (these houses share common walls, so the construction costs may be lower)

$38,000 per house in fees (they’re slightly lower for townhouses)

$78,750 per house for the land

$5,500 per house for site work

$10,000 per house for landscaping and a driveway (since each house is on a smaller lot)

$44,000 per house for realtor fees and closing costs

$24,000 per house in monthly payments

$4,000 per house in interest for your investor friends

That's $504,250 total.

If you listed each of these houses for $550,000, you could make $183,000. Again, even if each house sold below your asking price, you have four chances to make a profit and a much wider group of homebuyers have the chance to buy a home in this neighborhood.

New houses are expensive because we require them to be expensive

These are back of the envelope calculations, and you should take them with a grain of salt. That being said, this is a pretty accurate reflection of how homebuilders and developers figure out how much to sell a house for. These two lots are real, and each sold for $315,000 this year. The buyer was a local homebuilder who built this home down the street, which listed for $925,000, and sold for $850,000 a few months later. They'll probably do the same here.

Image from Google Street View.

That’s because, despite the risks of building just one house that the local market may not want, it would be illegal to build four houses on this lot, or even two. This lot is zoned R-60, meaning building lots can’t be any smaller than 6,000 square feet, or this lot is just small enough that you can only have one house there. You could rezone the land to allow more than one house, but neighbors in Silver Spring just spent three years fighting such a proposal a few blocks away, and you can’t blame someone for wanting to avoid that.

]]>Thu, 21 Dec 2017 16:00:00 +0000Dan Reed (Editorial Board)Montgomery County is adapting to new retail trends; can it adapt its reputation?https://ggwash.org/view/65928/montgomery-county-retail-study-adapt-to-new-retail-trends
https://ggwash.org/view/65928/montgomery-county-retail-study-adapt-to-new-retail-trends

Suburban strip malls aren't known for their ambiance. As shoppers seek out unique experiences or just take their business online, these places could be in deep trouble. In Montgomery County, a new study aims to prepare suburban shopping districts for the future of retail.

Lately I’ve been buying my booze at this place called Quench!, which has an amazing selection of craft beer from little companies like Evil Twin and Stillwater that can be hard to find. In the back is a deli with amazing sandwiches, and once a week, a local bakery called Upper Crust sets up in one of the aisles to sell bread. Next door, there's a tap room, with a little patio shrouded in ivy and string lights.

You probably expect me to tell you this place is in Shaw, or in a new "town center"-style development like the Mosaic District. In fact, Quench! sits in a grungy, half-vacant 1960s strip mall far out New Hampshire Avenue in eastern Montgomery County, a stretch of road with so many sprawling megachurches that it's called the "Highway to Heaven." It might just hold some secrets to the future of retail — and suburbia.

Montgomery County's issue isn't vacancies, but reputation

Retail trends are changing as more shoppers buy things online, but also as the kinds of stores they patronize have changed. Stores that can’t adapt — especially big chain stores — have been struggling, and many suburban communities are dealing with massive vacancies and abandonment.

Here in the DC area, a number of enclosed shopping malls have been torn down, including White Flint Mall in Montgomery County. However, vacancies aren't a huge problem in much of Montgomery County, according to a recent study of local retail the Planning Department did with help from Streetsense, a Bethesda-based consulting firm.

The study found that the county’s retail market is pretty healthy, in part because we avoided the mistake of many other suburban places that built too much retail space. One exception was Gaithersburg, where Lakeforest Mall has been losing customers and retailers (though the mall could get a second life by embracing the area's international community, as I wrote in Washingtonian).

However, the county's retail environment does suffer from the perception that it's difficult to open a business, particularly if you're seeking a liquor license. Denizens Brewing Company, a brewery in downtown Silver Spring, had to have a state law changed so it could open. Another Silver Spring brewery, Parallel World, needed to have the zoning laws adjusted before it could even get a business loan. The study recommended that the county improve the permitting process for restaurants and bars as well as for companies that make their own products.

Another issue the study raised is that retailers have long avoided the less affluent eastern side of the county because of an assumption that customers don't have money to spend. The result is that residents often have to travel to the more affluent western side of the county to shop or even to eat at a nice restaurant. While the study didn't totally address this issue, there is a pretty interesting opportunity in East County to create the kind of authentic, locally-focused retail experience that shoppers increasingly want.

East County's retail districts have a big opportunity

Even as shopping malls and high-end retail flocked to wealthy areas like Bethesda and Rockville, many of East County's commercial districts remained pretty small. Colesville, where Quench! is located, hasn't seen any major development in over 30 years, and you can still see parts of the rural crossroads it used to be. That’s due to a mix of careful planning (much of the area was zoned for low density suburban development) and neglect (some sections of East County didn’t have electricity or running water until the 1960s).

These older commercial strips on New Hampshire Avenue haven't changed in decades. Image by the author.

This isolation can be a strength, however. As people increasingly seek walkable neighborhoods with a strong sense of place, these places offer a sense of authentic community that can be difficult to find in suburban areas. As Rockville Pike boomed, many of its historic villages have largely disappeared, places like Windham, Edmonston, and Autrey Park. Meanwhile East County areas like Colesville, Ashton, and Burtonsville have retained their identity and their status as local commercial hubs.

Today, these “villages” are small enough to get around by foot or bike — Colesville is barely three miles across — but big enough to support some local bus service. Because retail space is cheap, there’s lots of cool stuff that neighbors could theoretically walk to: Quench!; Burtonsville's "Restaurant Row," featuring everything from Ethiopian to Afghan to Cuban food; corner grocery stores, and hardware stores.

These are the kind of businesses that, not long ago, you’d have to live inside the Beltway if you wanted to walk to them. However, many neighborhoods within DC and inside the Beltway have become very expensive because so many people want those things, yet neighbors often fight attempts to build more housing in those communities. These village centers in East County could offer an alternative for the large segment of homebuyers who want that that mix of suburban space and urban access, but at a far lower cost.

Montgomery County's older suburbs need more connections

That said, Colesville isn't an stand-in for downtown Silver Spring. East County's commercial districts consist of strip malls of varying sizes. There aren't many sidewalks or bike lanes, and the roads can be huge and fast. These communities are still far from the region’s jobs and activity centers, meaning many residents commute long distances to work.

East County commercial areas like Colesville are pretty car-oriented, but are small enough to be made walkable. Image from Google Maps.

It won't be that way forever though. Montgomery County’s bicycle plan will create more sidewalks and bike lanes, and the county will soon start work on a Bus Rapid Transit line that will connect East County to the Red Line. Meanwhile, the Viva White Oak development will give East County a downtown, with shops, offices, and homes all within walking distance of each other. Put together, these projects will help attract a new generation of people to older East County neighborhoods that need them.

Until that happens, places like Quench! suggest that there’s a different path forward for East County — one that takes advantage of its built history while adapting it for the future.

Top image: Quench! is a craft beer shop and restaurant in an unlikely place. Image by the author.

As the Purple Line begins construction, many are worried about the potential impact on working-class immigrant neighborhoods. How can we ensure that people can afford to stay in their neighborhood as the land around the line grows in value?

Two candidates for Montgomery County executive presented wildly different visions at a recent forum, with one accusing the Planning Board of promoting "ethnic cleansing" along the corridor.

Marc Elrich, a candidate for county executive, made the accusation while speaking at a candidate forum earlier this week hosted by liberal group Progressive Neighbors in downtown Silver Spring. Elrich appeared alongside his opponent George Leventhal, who is also a Democrat and an at-large county councilmember. (There are four other candidates, but they didn’t show up.)

Blogger Ryan Miner recorded this video and shared it on his site, A Miner Detail. Moderator Joan King asked the candidates what they can do to help make Montgomery County an affordable place for renters to live. Elrich replied:

“I support rent stabilization, and I think we need to be honest with ourselves about this. We threw up our hands and said, ‘The market will determine the price of housing, and the market alone will determine that.’ And we are going to wipe out neighborhood after neighborhood in Montgomery County.

You can bet, if we don’t do rent stabilization at the Purple Line stops for example, the neighborhoods around the Purple Line will not continue to exist. It will be bought, it will be repurposed, it will go to other people. When we did the Long Branch plan, and Park and Planning came in and said we want to rezone all of the existing housing in Long Branch, I accused the Planning Board of ethnic cleansing. Some people do it with a gun, you are doing it with a pen. But the truth is those folks will be gone, and they will be gone forever.”

And Leventhal said:

So, Montgomery County is very successful. It’s very desirable. We have an excellent school system, we have safe neighborhoods, we have thriving urban centers like Silver Spring and Bethesda, and we’re trying to improve our placemaking and the excitement and urban life in places like Wheaton and, we hope, Glenmont. We do have market affordable housing in places like Wheaton and Glenmont. In Bethesda, we have just adopted the highest price control mandate in the county’s history. Fifteen percent of all new housing that comes online in downtown Bethesda will have to be price controlled below market rate.

The reality is that housing prices are controlled by supply and demand, and as long as there is high demand for housing here, prices will be high. There are communities that have very low housing prices, and those by and large are places you don’t want to live. So, we are investing $51 million this year in our Housing Initiative Fund, more than ever before in the county’s history.

The best way to get more affordable housing is to allow more housing, and that addresses the supply side of the equation

In many of these communities, there are real concerns that the Purple Line could increase the demand for homes and drive up prices, potentially pushing out lower-income people.

The Long Branch plan, like these other plans, addresses that by allowing the building of new homes and apartments in that neighborhood in anticipation of more people wanting to live there. It also plans a variety of new amenities for residents to enjoy, including new sidewalks and bike lanes, expanded parkland and recreational facilities, and the preservation of the historic Flower Theatre.

The plan’s zoning will restrict most new development in Long Branch to replacing the area’s strip malls and parking lots, many of which haven’t seen significant investment in decades. Even so, the area could accommodate more than 3,200 new homes, 400 of which would be set aside for low-income families. That’s on top of the existing 1,800 garden-style apartments in Long Branch, which were built in the 1940s and 1950s and comprise most of the area’s low-cost housing.

The County Council chose to preserve these apartments, and it’s something Marc Elrich pushed for during the planning process. Leventhal was one of the eight councilmembers who voted in favor of the plan, while Elrich was the lone vote against the plan, claiming it didn't do enough to support local businesses.

If we’re serious about keeping people in their neighborhoods, here’s how to do it

Building new homes isn’t enough to preserve affordable housing in Long Branch and other communities along the Purple Line.

Over the past several years, the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland has pulled together over 150 labor, environmental, civic, and business groups, as well as local officials, to form the Purple Line Corridor Coalition. The coalition's mission is to develop a strategy for ensuring that the people who live near the Purple Line today can stay and benefit from it.

Their recommendations include everything from subsidizing the creation and preservation of affordable housing, to providing business loans and training to small businesses to help them survive Purple Line construction, to workforce training for current residents, to encouraging public art around Purple Line stations. Some of these things are already happening, while others need political support to actually get enacted.

We need political leaders who can actually do that. Montgomery County's primary election is June 26, 2018 and as the race heats up, it's important for voters to consider who's serious about supporting these neighborhoods and the people who live in them, and who compares those efforts to a war crime.

(Full disclosure: I worked in George Leventhal's county council office seven years ago.)

Top image: Elrich at the Progressive Neighbors forum. Screenshot from a video by Ryan Miner.

Earlier this month, Montgomery County released two proposals for what to do with the former library in downtown Silver Spring. But only one proposal includes much-needed affordable homes, and that’s the one county officials should pick.

Since the new Silver Spring Library opened in 2015, Montgomery County has been trying to figure out what to do with the old library, located on Colesville Road four blocks from the Metro station. County officials have settled on putting affordable housing and a child care center there. In the meantime, the 1950s-era building is currently home to the Friends of the Library’s used bookstore (and is worth checking out!)

There are now two proposals for redevelopment. One proposal from affordable housing developer Victory Housing would replace the library building with a new four-story building containing 92 apartments for low-income seniors and a daycare center. It's similar to a building they're completing in White Oak this winter.

The other proposal, from the Martha B. Gudelsky Child Development Center (MBGCDC) and CentroNia, would simply turn the existing building into a daycare center. Instead of building any new affordable housing, this proposal would simply subsidize the rent of 15 apartments “somewhere else.”

Map of how the site looks today. Image by the author.

Last fall, over 300 Silver Spring residents signed a petition circulated by myself and neighbors Gray Kimbrough and Amanda Hurley supporting affordable housing at the old library. But there’s also a vocal group of neighbors who oppose new housing in the area and want to turn the old library into an extension of Ellsworth Park, which is next door. (A smaller group from the Historical Society just wants to preserve the library building, which they consider to be architecturally significant.)

However, housing and child care is the best choice for this site. Over the past 20 years, Silver Spring has had an amazing resurgence, and with it came rising home prices. Meanwhile, the supply of affordable housing here and nationwide is decreasing, and there's a risk that less affluent residents could get pushed out. They deserve the chance to live in this community too, and to be able to walk to shops, social activities, and the Metro.

What happens next?

Sometime in the near future, County Executive Ike Leggett will choose one of the two proposals. If Leggett chooses Victory Housing’s proposal, which includes apartments, he’ll have to get the zoning changed, as today you can only build single-family homes on this property.

In order to do that, the Planning Board will have to approve the zoning change, followed by the County Council. Both of these processes involve lengthy reviews and public hearings, and will give opponents many opportunities to stall or block the project. Chelsea Heights, the townhouse development across the street which also required a rezoning, took over three years just to get approved!

That’s why it’s important to reach out to county officials now, including County Executive Ike Leggett and the County Council, and let them know that Silver Spring needs this project.

The new BRT line, dubbed Flash, will run along Route 29 between the Silver Spring Metro station and the Burtonsville Park & Ride. It's the first of what could be a countywide network of rapid bus lines. Flash will contain a variety of features designed to make the bus faster and more reliable, including dedicated lanes for part of the route and special signals that give buses extra green time at congested intersections. The 11-mile line will have just 12 stations, spaced up to two miles apart, and could carry 13,000 people per day.

And those stations won’t look like any bus stops you’ve seen in the area before. Designed by local architecture firm ZGF, the stations are designed to be visually distinctive, while adaptable to the wide variety of urban and suburban neighborhoods along the BRT line.

A plan showing all the features of a BRT station.

The designers have created a canopy structure for each station with a mix of metal, wood, and glass accents. The stations will also have an iconic “station marker,” which will help riders find each station and provide real-time information and a system map. The stations will all be accessible for riders with disabilities and have ticket machines where riders can pay before getting on the bus, reducing delays.

How the Fenton Street BRT station could look.

However, no two stations will be exactly alike, as the designers created a “menu” of station features that the county can pick and choose from based on the needs of that specific location. Those amenities include public art, wifi and cellphone charging spots, or low impact design (LID) landscaping, which can collect and distribute rainwater, reducing runoff and pollution.

The stations will be different sizes based on their location. Busier stations might have larger shelters to accommodate multiple buses. Locations in downtown Silver Spring might have smaller shelters to fit on tight sidewalks, while more suburban stations will have more green space around them.

A "menu" of options would allow each station to fit into its surroundings.

These designs are still preliminary, so we don’t have a lot of details about how much they’ll cost. But one estimate in the designers’ report says that each station could cost between $368,000 and $490,000. The entire BRT line will cost $31 million.

There’s no reason infrastructure can’t be both functional and attractive. Do you think these hit the mark?

Top image: What Montgomery County's new Flash bus rapid transit stations could look like. All images from ZGF.

Montgomery County wants to turn the old Silver Spring Library into affordable apartments for seniors and a child care center. Last week, the county presented two options for how to do that–however, due to neighbors' opposition to any homes being built here, one proposal would put those apartments "somewhere else."

Victory Housing's proposal would replace the library with affordable senior housing and a child care center. Image by Montgomery County.

The first proposal comes from Victory Housing, which builds and operates several affordable housing developments around Montgomery County. It envisions replacing the former library with a four-story building containing 92 senior housing units, 72 of which would be affordable units, many of them "deeply affordable" for households below 30 or 40 percent of the area median income.

The building would also house a child care center for 80 to 100 children, as well as community space for meetings. While the proposal does not specify age ranges for children served, it would be operated by Communikids, which currently runs facilities accepting children between one and a half and five years old. The library's existing parking lot and driveway would stay, and contain 92 parking spaces.

MBGCDC/CentroNia's proposal would turn the library into a child care center and do nothing else. Image used with permission.

A second joint proposal from child care providers Martha B. Gudelsky Child Development Center (MBGCDC) and CentroNia would turn the existing library into a daycare center for 125 to 150 children, ranging from infants to five-year-olds. The building would get a two-story addition in the back, and the existing parking lot would remain.

Despite the county's requirement that development at the old library include some housing, MBGCDC/CentroNia would instead put 15 affordable apartments somewhere else in downtown Silver Spring, paying down the rents of market-rate apartments to make them affordable.

Victory Housing Proposal

MBGCDC/CentroNia Proposal

Housing units constructed

92

0

Child care spots proposed

80-100

125-150

Age range for child care provided

not specified, 2.5-5?

0-5

Parking spaces

92

Not specified

Maximum height built

4 stories

2 stories

Neighbors continue to fight this project

This project has a lot of community support. We circulated a petition last fall that got over 300 signatures, many of which came from Silver Spring residents who talked about the high cost of housing and the need for affordable rental options.

But since the county announced this project last year, two sources of opposition have emerged. The Silver Spring Historical Society wants to see the old library building preserved, as they consider the 1950's-era building a significant example of mid-century modern architecture.

Redeveloping this site would be a perfect opportunity to build more housing, which is in high demand in such prime downtown Silver Spring locations as this. The site is a half mile from the Silver Spring Metro station, which will also soon be a stop on the Purple Line. It's an even shorter walk to two grocery stores, dozens of restaurants, a mall, and many other stores. A child care facility would also be a huge asset to Silver Spring and meet a critical community need.

Map of how the site looks today. Image by the author.

A mid-rise building like the one Victory Housing proposes would be a good transition between Ellsworth Park and Colesville Towers, a 12-story apartment building next to the former library. (In fact, given this location, this building could be even taller!)

But MBGCDC/CentroNia's proposal, which would provide a child care center and nothing else, is a missed opportunity. Their proposal does not set out why this location in particular would be ideal for this center and nothing else. I asked the presenters to respond to this, and one told me that most locations in the area would be on the first floor of an office building, which would not be what parents want.

Setting aside that my children's child care center is in an office building in downtown Silver Spring, there are plenty of other sites available for just a child care center. That's not an excuse to deny people access to housing in a close-in area.

Your feedback is crucial

The county's next step is to select a proposal, but both proposals may require rezoning the site, which currently allows only single-family homes. That means both the Planning Board and the County Council will have to approve rezoning, which will give both supporters and opponents of housing the chance to weigh in.

Both of us live near this site, are homeowners, and strongly encourage our neighbors to support the Victory Housing proposal, while advocating for improvements such as expansion of the child care center's scope to include infant care, and reducing the amount of the site taken up by surface parking and roadways.

Sign up below and we'll keep you updated on how to best get involved as this project moves forward.

Ten years after the Great Recession, home prices in many parts of the Washington region have reached or even topped their pre-recession peaks. But will this trend continue? A look at a wide sampling of real estate websites says yes – but the mismatch between what buyers can afford and what kinds of homes are available could change that.

The conventional wisdom appears to say we’re not heading into another recession anytime soon. However, while Millennials are finally settling down and ready to buy homes, they will struggle to afford homes in places like DC due to high costs. In the coming years, climbing home prices will stagnate because buyers' income levels increases aren’t keeping pace with costs.

These three things suggest a recession isn’t coming soon

Real estate downturns tend to happen pretty regularly, notes real estate entrepreneur and Harvard Extension School lecturer Ted Nicolais. Going all the way back to the 19th century, real estate downturns take place about once every 16 to 18 years. Since the last recession occurred between 2006 and 2008, he predicts we can expect another one between 2022 and 2024.

How many active home listings there are in the Mid-Atlantic from 2007 to 2017. Image by MRIS used with permission.

On top of that, the supply of homes for sale is less than half what it was 10 years ago. MRIS, the listing service for real estate agents in DC, Maryland, Northern Virginia, and small parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, found there were 37,000 homes for sale in the region in August 2017 compared to 82,000 in September 2007.

The housing market is working, but not for everyone

As a result, the housing market is pretty tight, especially for people who are looking for more affordable starter homes. Many of my fellow Millennials are finally getting settled into stable employment, and more of them are ready to buy homes. But area home builders are primarily constructing high-end homes due to high land costs, high labor costs, and high regulatory costs that make it too expensive to build smaller, cheaper homes. In Silver Spring, one local builder says that the legal costs alone for a new townhouse development added $50,000 to the price of each home.

How median home sale prices have changed compared to one year earlier. Less-expensive homes have increased in value faster than more expensive ones. Image by MRIS used with permission.

Because there aren’t enough smaller, cheaper homes being built, there’s more competition for them, which drives up prices faster. This graph shows how DC-area homes in the $200,000 range have increased in value at higher rates than homes in the $800,000 range. You can swap these out for other price ranges and get a similar result.

Meanwhile, other people may simply choose to keep renting because they can't find homes that meet their needs at prices they can afford. That alone might cause a slowdown in the housing market. In some areas that could spark a buyer's market because so many buyers give up that those who remain suddenly have a lot more houses to choose from.

None of those scenarios are ideal. There's a big mismatch in the housing market as buyers seek lower-cost homes where only high-end homes are available. One of the best ways to fix that is to allow more housing and reduce financial and regulatory barriers to building more affordably-priced homes.

Last week, Amazon announced that it wants to build a second headquarters, and all bets are off for where they'll build it. Will the online tech company, who recently purchased a national grocery store chain and whose CEO owns a major newspaper, consider moving to the DC area? Do we even want it?

Amazon has asked cities to submit proposals for what it dubs HQ2, and they have a long list of demands. it wants to locate in a metropolitan area of more than one million people where it can hire 50,000 employees. It wants a "stable and business-friendly environment," and a community that can "think big and creatively when considering locations and real estate options."

The headquarters itself will be an "urban or downtown campus" similar to Amazon's Seattle headquarters, in an urban or suburban location "with the potential to attract and retain strong technical talent." HQ2 would be within 30 miles of a major population center, 45 minutes to an international airport, one or two miles from a major highway, and most significantly, have direct access to transit (presumably rail).

But here's the catch: Amazon wants a "greenfield site" of 100 acres to build their new headquarters, with utilities already in place, and at least one 500,000 square foot building with room to expand to 8 million square feet. (To put that into context, the Pentagon is 6.6 million square feet.) It would be hard for any city to scrape together that much land and meet all of the other requirements.

This is how much space Amazon wants, laid over downtown DC. Image by the author.

Our contributors puzzled over where Amazon could go in the DC area, as it could have a huge impact on that community's fortunes. “It's like a corporate version of Willy Wonka's golden tickets," said Canaan Merchant.

A District location would be hard

"Reminds me a lot of the Marriott location search, except of course the scale of this is even greater," says Tracy Loh. "I see a lot of "lessons learned" from their Seattle campus in this - [especially] regarding the transportation piece, but also in the repeated assertion that they want a "business friendly" jurisdiction and they want a ready-to-build area. They are not looking to rezone or build their own transit line the way Vulcan did in South Lake Union."

Tracy added, "DC area is a strong contender, not just because we fit the criteria for multiple sites, but [because] Jeff Bezos just bought a huge house in Dupont Circle."

Many contributors felt that Amazon probably wouldn't move to the District itself, given the need for so much empty land. “Unfortunately I don't think DC itself has the space unless they really, really, wanted to accelerate plans in a place like Poplar Point," said Canaan.

Dan Malouff disagreed, saying, "Poplar Point basically fits their criteria though, so why not? So does the DC General redevelopment site, and maybe Walter Reed, Saint Elizabeths, or even somewhere like Brentwood. The District is constrained but it's not impossible."

Could Amazon come to Maryland or Virginia?

Where can you find 100 acres next to a Metro station? I said Amazon might find a home outside the District, in one of our region's suburban downtowns. "I think [Amazon would] be open to a place like White Flint in Maryland, especially considering the amount of space and land they need, access to transit and airports, nearby major universities (I think UMD could play a big role in this)."

"It’s already set up for a big high density development, streets are laid out, transit is in place, and neighbors are already anticipating a lot of development, avoiding a potential battle there. Just look at how much flack Marriott is getting for moving into downtown Bethesda, now imagine that times 20.”

Ned Russell thinks Tysons Corner would be a serious option. “I think Amazon HQ2 would be ideal for one of the new Metro stations in Tysons," he said. "They could essentially build as high/dense as they want, while taking advantage of the billions invested in the rail line and helping to realise Fairfax County's vision for a walkable Tysons."

"In addition, Amazon wants access to a major international airport, Dulles would only be a few minutes down the toll road or a short Metro ride from a Tysons HQ2," Ned adds. "To the housing concerns, there's a lot of developable land in Tysons and density could - and I think would - be increased on these sites if developers see a major employer like Amazon promising to bring up to 50,000 new jobs to the area. I think an Amazon HQ2 in Tysons could really accelerate the urbanisation of the area that we all hope happens soon.”

Joanne Tang agrees. "I agree that Northern VA is the real contender when we talk about DC, and Tysons would be an ideal location, along with Dulles. Amazon just opened a web services home office in Dulles."

David Alpert suggested that there’s a real cost to dropping 50,000 new workers on the west side of the region, where job centers like White Flint and Tysons are located. “The farther out of the center of the region a potential HQ goes, especially the farther west it goes, the worse for transportation and sprawl," he said. "Yes, even Dulles will have a train, but that train will mostly just go one direction, and a lot of people would be driving from the west. And it would exacerbate the east-west divide. (Unfortunately, any location in Virginia would, but outside the Beltway more so)."

Could Amazon revitalize Baltimore or Prince George's County?

Joe Fox suggests we look beyond the immediate DC area and consider Baltimore. "If we're talking regionally here, what about Baltimore? There are a ton of positives there, space, urban, still a good airport (BWI), and might help push some MARC, Maglev, Red Line, you name it, improvements..."

Baltimore would welcome 50,000 new jobs with open arms. Image by BeyondDC.

But Ned, our resident airport expert, noted Amazon's desires for access to an international airport. “Baltimore - despite the redevelopment potential that I would love to see - is also out due to its distance from a major international airport. BWI's only long-hauls are to Frankfurt, London and Iceland."

David wonders if that would be a major issue. “And I really like Baltimore. We should care about wanting this nearby city to thrive," he said. "The airport might not have a lot of international, but Amazon's being there could trigger it; meanwhile, it is I believe Southwest's #2 airport in terms of # of flights. It could pull from the area labor market but we pull from theirs now, and this could encourage efforts to connect the two with high-speed transit. (Doesn't have to be maglev, just regular fast trains would be great.)”

Bradley Heard argued that Prince George's County has everything Amazon is looking for, and could use the investment. "Why go to Baltimore when you have Prince George's County?!" he said. "There are few places in the Washington region with that kind of acreage around a Metro station. The Blue Line corridor around Central Avenue--in particular Morgan Boulevard Station--would be an ideal location. I've previously advocated that site for the regional hospital and the FBI, but Amazon would work too!

Andrew Dupuy isn't excited about DC landing HQ2. “I'm really hoping Amazon doesn't go into my beloved former hometown of Austin, and I'm not particularly keen on it going here," he said. "Anecdotally, Seattleites (sp?) seem to think it's had a big role in the housing crunch and yuppification of Seattle."

He also notes that Amazon's labor practices aren't great. "Moreover, we know that their warehouse workers are flex-scheduled and not organized, but the culture of Amazon also treats its white-collar workers terribly. It's a bad company that engages in ruthless monopolistic practices, and it's one that I try to avoid buying from (yeah, I cheat sometimes, and I do subscribe to Bezos's Post). That's not the kind of employment and values I want in wherever I live, and particularly in a region that has a pretty good economy already. “

"Amazon has to go somewhere though," said Dan Malouff, who added, "I think it would be great if Amazon went to a Detroit or a Cleveland, where it could really add a lot of vitality. But wherever it goes, it's up to that city to legalize enough housing via its zoning. It isn't Amazon's fault that Seattle and DC prioritize single-family zoning over providing enough supply."

What do you think? Should Amazon open their second headquarters in DC? If so, where should it go?

Top image: Amazon's headquarters in Seattle. Could this be coming to a city near you? Image by SDOT Photos licensed under Creative Commons.

]]>Mon, 11 Sep 2017 14:18:00 +0000Dan Reed (Editorial Board)A trail in Bethesda will close for five years due to the Purple Line. It’s totally worth it.https://ggwash.org/view/64653/a-trail-in-bethesda-will-close-for-five-years-due-to-the-purple-line.-its-t
https://ggwash.org/view/64653/a-trail-in-bethesda-will-close-for-five-years-due-to-the-purple-line.-its-t

Today, the Georgetown Branch Trail in Montgomery County closes for several years for Purple Line construction. While I'll miss it, losing this version of the trail is worth getting a better, longer trail in return.

Last week, the Purple Line light rail broke ground after a three-decade fight that culminated in a lawsuit filed by some Chevy Chase residents who live next to the future route. For four miles between Bethesda and Silver Spring, the line will run along the Georgetown Branch, a former freight rail line that Montgomery County bought in the 1980s to eventually use for a transit line. In the meantime, they turned it into a temporary extension of the Capital Crescent Trail, which goes from Bethesda to Georgetown.

The trail today is unpaved and ends two miles west of Silver Spring. Image by the author.

Since this could be our last chance to ride on the trail, on Saturday, Sean Emerson and I decided to travel the entire Purple Line route, by bike and car, with a camera in hand. We wanted to record what the area was like before construction starts, sort of like Raleigh D'Adamo's films of old DC Trolley routes. (I still have to put this video together - it’s long! - but I will post it when it’s ready.)

We rode the temporary trail from Lyttonsville, where it currently ends, to Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda and back, a distance of about seven miles, in the rain. And for a moment, I couldn't blame people for mourning.

I barely noticed the distance, or how wet my socks were getting. The stresses that normally accompany biking on busy city streets had melted away. The almost continuous tree cover shielded us from the rain, and the trail’s gentle slope meant I didn't have to pedal too hard. Because the trail is entirely separated from cars, I didn’t have to worry about getting doored by parked cars or being sideswiped by a driver wandering into the bike lane. We even found a steady stream of other people walking, jogging, and biking along the trail, even as the rainstorm grew.

But as we biked east across Rock Creek, that experience changed fast. The gravel trail had lots of ruts and puddles, and we nearly ate it a few times. People had dumped their garbage along the trail. In Lyttonsville, we passed industrial buildings, a Ride On bus lot, and what appeared to be a junkyard. And of course, the trail abruptly ended in a parking lot two miles west of downtown Silver Spring.

How the trail and the Purple Line will look after completion. Image by Maryland Transit Administration.

If you live anywhere east of Bethesda, the trail that some neighbors fought so hard to preserve isn’t as accessible. From my building in downtown Silver Spring, the best path to the trail involves biking on big, stressful roads like East-West Highway or 16th Street.

That’s why I’m looking forward to the Purple Line. As part of the project, the trail will finally be paved. Overpasses will replace two dangerous intersections where the trail crosses Connecticut Avenue and Jones Mill Road. The trail will extend further east, along the right-of-way Purple Line trains will share with Metro, MARC, and Amtrak trains between Lyttonsville and the Silver Spring Metro station. And there, the Capital Crescent Trail will connect to the Metropolitan Branch Trail and the Silver Spring Green Trail (which connects to the Sligo Creek Trail), filling a big gap in the region’s trail network.

It won’t be exactly the same. There won’t be as many trees on the trail when it reopens alongside the Purple Line in five years. And it won’t be a private amenity for the homeowners lucky enough to live next to it. But neighborhoods across Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, and DC will have access to the same fun and safe off-road trail experience that people in Chevy Chase and Bethesda enjoy today.

To me, that’s worth it.

Top image: Somebody posted this sign on the trail in Bethesda this weekend. Image by the author.

It's official: after three decades of debate and several brushes with death, the Purple Line broke ground this morning in New Carrollton.

"We've made it!" exclaimed Pete Rahn, Maryland's secretary of transportation, throwing his arms in the air. "It's been a long road, but we finally made it today."

In front of hundreds of local officials and well-wishers, Governor Larry Hogan and US Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao signed a federal grant agreement for $900 million, before the governor boarded a bulldozer and tore into a building that will make way for a future rail yard.

Governor Hogan, riding a bulldozer, tears down a building to make way for the Purple Line. Image by Aimee Custis.

"The Purple Line will be a transformative asset for our state," Hogan said. "We will continue to find the most cost-effective ways to invest in and improve our transportation systems."

The 16-mile long light rail line will run between Bethesda and New Carrollton and have 21 stations, including transfers at four Metro stations. The $2 billion project will include a mix of federal, state, and county funding. There has been no shortage of setbacks for the project since it was first proposed in 1986, but the project was largely a go by 2014, when Governor Hogan took office. Shortly after, he put the project on hold for nearly a year to find cost-cutting measures, and asked Montgomery and Prince George's counties to pay a higher share of the cost. (At the same time, Hogan cancelled the Baltimore Red Line, which had been up for federal funding as well.)

Local officials use purple shovels in a ceremonial groundbreaking. Image by Aimee Custis.

It's also notable as the nation's largest transit project built through a public-private partnership, or when a private company works with the government. Purple Line Transit Partners, a consortium of private companies, will build and operate the project in exchange for payments from the state for the next 35 years. It's something the Republican administration wants to encourage, and Secretary Chao said it could be a model for other projects around the nation.

"P3s are used throughout the world to fund transit projects, and can be used to invest in infrastructure around the country," she said. "We do not have the money to fund every project in this country," praising Montgomery and Prince George's counties for "having some skin in the game" and each contributing several hundred million dollars towards the Purple Line.

The Purple Line is projected to have 56,000 daily riders by 2030 and create 52,000 jobs, both directly through its construction and indirectly from investment along the corridor. Those who spoke at the groundbreaking this morning, including Senator Chris Van Hollen, Congressman Anthony Brown, and Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, cited the project's benefits to the state of Maryland as whole.

"This will not only help people off the roads and protect the environment, but create jobs all over the state. This is a project for all Marylanders," said Rushern Baker, Prince George's County Executive.

Multiple officials gave a shout out to Harry Sanders, who advocated for the project with his wife Barbara and son Greg for decades, before he passed away in 2010. "That persistence over a period of decades is what has helped us bring here today," says Senator Chris Van Hollen.

Construction will literally start today. On the way home from the event, we passed a group of people in construction gear on University Boulevard in Langley Park, carrying what appeared to be blueprints for the Purple Line. If everything goes as scheduled, the Purple Line will open in 2022.

This morning, community leaders and advocates will break ground on the Purple Line after three decades of debate and legal battles, some of which are ongoing. Why has the Purple Line kept moving forward? This post from last summer takes a look at why so many people continue to fight for it, from local environmental groups to Governor Hogan.

The Purple Line will be a 16-mile light rail line between Bethesda and New Carrollton. It’ll connect three Metro lines, all three MARC commuter rail lines, and Amtrak, as well as countless local bus routes. It’ll serve two of the region’s biggest job centers, Bethesda and Silver Spring, as well as Maryland’s flagship university. It’ll give Montgomery and Prince George’s counties a fast, reliable alternative to current bus service and Beltway traffic.

The Capital Crescent Trail, which ends two miles outside of Silver Spring, will get fully paved and extended to the Silver Spring Metro station, where it’ll connect to the Metropolitan Branch Trail. The trail will get a new bridge at Connecticut Avenue and new underpasses at Jones Bridge Road, and 16th Street, so trail users won’t have to cross those busy streets.

Wayne Avenue in Silver Spring will get a new trail. Photo by the author.

Streets in other parts of the corridor will get rebuilt with new sidewalks and bike lanes. University Boulevard in Langley Park will get a road diet. Wayne Avenue in Silver Spring will get a new, extended Green Trail.

2) It will let more people live and work near transit more affordably. Metro has its problems, but people still value living in walkable, transit-served neighborhoods. As a result, communities with Metro stations can be very expensive. The Purple Line puts more neighborhoods and more homes near transit, as well as more opportunities to build new homes near transit, helping meet demand and fighting spikes in home prices.

How far you can get by transit from Riverdale today and after the Purple Line is built.

3) It will improve commutes far beyond Bethesda to New Carrollton. The Purple Line will dramatically improve transportation access for people who live or work near one of its 21 stations. But even those whose homes or jobs aren’t near the Purple Line may travel through the corridor, getting a faster, more reliable trip.

Right now, a bus trip between Silver Spring and Bethesda can take 20 minutes at rush hour (though in reality it takes much longer due to traffic). On the Purple Line, that trip would take just nine minutes. That’s a time savings for anyone passing through the Purple Line corridor, like if you were going from Riverdale (which will have a station) to Rock Spring Business Park in Bethesda, which won’t have a station, but you'd save time by taking the Purple Line to Bethesda and switching to a bus, versus taking a bus the whole way as you would today.

4) It’s finally bringing investment to some of our most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Communities like Long Branch, Langley Park, and Riverdale have long awaited the kind of amenities more affluent communities take for granted. When Maryland and the federal government agreed to fund the Purple Line, people took notice. Long Branch businesses formed an association.

While the Purple Line can help meet the demand for transit-served housing, there are real concerns that home prices may still rise, resulting in gentrification and displacement. That’s why residents, business owners, and the University of Maryland partnered on the Purple Line Community Compact, which creates a plan for ensuring that people can afford to stay.

5) We actually don’t know everything the Purple Line will do. Transportation planners can estimate how many people will use a transit line, but we can’t predict how it will affect people’s decisions about where to live, work, shop, or do other things. That’s the most exciting part.

Metro helped revitalize Silver Spring. The Purple Line can do this for more communities. Photo by the author.

This week, Lakeforest Mall in Gaithersburg sold at a foreclosure auction for a fraction of its former value, suggesting it’s in serious trouble. It could be a huge opportunity for Gaithersburg, but will city officials take advantage?

Built in 1978, the two-story, 1 million-square-foot mall off Route 355 was one of Montgomery County’s premier shopping centers for decades, and anchored the adjacent planned community of Montgomery Village. Its developer, Alfred Taubman, was a pioneer in retail design who built dozens of similar-looking malls around the nation (including Marley Station Mall in Glen Burnie and Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax). Everything at Lakeforest, from the locations of individual stores, to the selection of floor materials, to the slope of the parking lot, was designed to draw and retain shoppers for as long as possible.

Consumers are also less likely to shop at malls, instead preferring to buy goods online. The suburbanization of poverty has affected neighborhoods around the mall, and some high-profile crimes have created a perception that the mall is unsafe, deterring even more shoppers.

Lakeforest's troubles could be a big opportunity

As a result, the mall has struggled to retain tenants. All four anchor stores, Sears, JCPenney, Macy’s and Lord & Taylor, are still there, but 25% of the mall is vacant, and sales are flagging. The mall’s value has fallen from $218.9 million in 2005 to just $40.2 million this year. On Tuesday, U.S. Bank bought the mall at a foreclosure auction for $19.1 million, one-fifth what previous owner Five Mile Capital paid for it in 2012. ("There are homes in [Montgomery County] that have sold for more than this," joked local blog The MoCo Show.)

If Lakeforest does close, the City of Gaithersburg has a pretty big opportunity. The mall sits on 103 acres next to Old Town Gaithersburg, is next to an exit on I-270, has its own transit center serving some of the county's busiest bus routes, and is close to MARC commuter rail. Ride On eXtra, a precursor to Bus Rapid Transit, will serve the mall starting this fall. One possibility is that the mall could be torn down and redeveloped as an urban neighborhood with a mix of homes, shops, parks, and other things.

An Outer Beltway would probably make Lakeforest Mall's problems worse, by encouraging a new generation of suburban sprawl that sucks even more investment away from older neighborhoods like those in Gaithersburg. How can we bring this site back to life? We should look at Gaithersburg’s (and Montgomery County's) most successful residential and commercial areas: walkable, urban neighborhoods like Kentlands and Crown, both of which are built around a future transit line, the Corridor Cities Transitway.

Already, Gaithersburg has a substantial concentration of no-car and one-car households. A potential redevelopment of Lakeforest Mall could bring new jobs and investment to an area that currently lacks both, and whose residents could benefit from having access to these things close at hand.

Nonetheless, the jury’s still out on Lakeforest’s future. And I’ll miss it if it goes. As a kid, my family would drive out to Lakeforest Mall and I remember lying on a bench one evening, staring at the skylights that filled the mall with natural light, and watching the lights gradually come on as the sun set. (That’s an old trick of Alfred Taubman’s, which prevented shoppers from noticing the passage of time.) Hopefully, whatever happens next here will give people a reason to come back.

]]>Thu, 24 Aug 2017 14:17:00 +0000Dan Reed (Editorial Board)This new suburban place has some lessons for old suburban placeshttps://ggwash.org/view/64454/clarksburg-isnt-that-bad-you-guys
https://ggwash.org/view/64454/clarksburg-isnt-that-bad-you-guys

30 miles north of DC, Montgomery County is trying to build a new kind of suburb in Clarksburg, one that looks more like a small town and where residents don't have to drive everywhere. It hasn't totally worked. But Clarksburg might actually have something to teach closer-in communities about how to grow sustainably.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve made it a tradition to go to Clarksburg at least once a year and tour some model houses. I remember visiting one model house there on a cold, gray day in December 2007. The sales agent, Dorothy, took me on a tour of the whole house, ending at a little balcony overlooking the backyard. As far as we could see there were other houses with beige siding and grey roofs. I asked her, what do you think of this view? And she said, “I try to think about it like I’m looking out over the rooftops of Paris.”

Paris? Image by the author.

Maybe that’s a little rich. I will say that Clarksburg is somewhat different than what we traditionally conceive of as a suburban community: big houses, big lawns, and lots of driving. As Montgomery County's older suburbs try to create the walkable, transit-oriented places that people increasingly want, Clarksburg might offer a few lessons.

Clarksburg has been in planning for over 50 years

In the 1960s, Montgomery County created the “Wedges and Corridors” concept, which basically laid out how the county would grow over the next 50 years. It broke the county up into four parts: an “urban ring” inside the Beltway, containing commutes like Bethesda and Silver Spring; two “wedges” on either side of I-270, containing suburban areas; and a “corridor” along I-270 itself, with five “corridor cities” along it: North Bethesda, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Germantown, and Clarksburg. At the edges of the county, one-third of its land would be set aside for agriculture.

As the northernmost “corridor city,” Clarksburg was basically rural until 20 years ago, when county planners laid out a plan for how it would develop once the suburbs finally caught up. They envisioned a walkable town, with compact neighborhoods of townhouses, apartments, and houses on small lots surrounding a little downtown with shops, public buildings, and a square. A new rapid transit line, the Corridor Cities Transitway, would connect it to Germantown, Gaithersburg, and the Red Line.

But the vision of compact, mixed neighborhoods has come true in parts. And they actually work kind of well. Here’s why.

Here's what Clarksburg can teach us

Part of Germantown (top) and Clarksburg (bottom) at the same scale.

It’s actually kind of walkable. Here’s an aerial of Milestone, a pretty typical 1990s subdivision in Germantown. There’s a mix of different things here: single-family homes, townhouses, apartments, a school. and a shopping center. But the roads are big and circuitous, and it’s really difficult to walk from one thing to another, even though they’re all close together.

Compare that to this section of Clarksburg Village, one of the new subdivisions in Clarksburg. All of those same components are still there, but they’re connected by a network of nice, tight streets with sidewalks and crosswalks and blocks. You can walk here, comfortably.

A "pocket park" in Clarksburg. Image by the author.

There are lots of good, usable open spaces. Some of them are pretty modest - a little shared green in front of several houses - and some of them are big enough to have playing fields and community buildings. What they have in common is that they’re designed as usable spaces. There are lots of paths connecting them to houses and nearby streets. Most spaces are big enough for some passive recreational activity. And while you might see some landscaping or a playground, there's enough empty space that they're flexible for whatever residents want to use them for that day.

Most new streets in Clarksburg have sidewalks. Image by the author.

It shows how homes can mix together. In Silver Spring, neighbors fought a proposed townhouse development because they felt it wouldn’t fit in with their stand-alone houses. Yet 30 miles away in Clarksburg, apartments, townhouses, and single-family homes of different styles and sizes happily coexist on the same block. You might argue that this is a new neighborhood, and it was planned to be this way. That’s true. But it’s also a return to the past in some ways, as the very oldest sections of Montgomery County have a similar mix. The results are neighborhoods that fit many people’s needs, regardless of income level, lifestyle, or personal preference.

Single-family houses and townhouses coexist in Clarksburg. (I took the photo from inside a model condo unit.) Image by the author.

Clarksburg is really, really diverse. One result of having such a fine-grained mix of housing is that people of different backgrounds or income levels can actually live here and feel welcome. The 2016 American Community Survey found that Clarksburg is majority-minority, as are all of the public schools. Neighboring Germantown was ranked one of the most ethnically diverse communities in the nation.

It’s really hard to build this stuff closer in

Clarksburg isn’t unique. There are a number of big new suburban developments on the region’s fringe that have some of these urban qualities: Maple Lawn in Howard County, the Villages of Urbana in Frederick County, Brambleton in Loudoun County, and Embrey Mill in Stafford County. (And we can't forget the granddaddy of all these neighborhoods, Kentlands in Gaithersburg.)

Part of why these communities are so popular is because of the urban-ish lifestyle they promise. It’s a lot cheaper than the alternative (closer-in, historically urban communities). It’s also really hard to build the townhomes or stacked towns you see in Clarksburg in a closer-in place like, say, Silver Spring. For instance, it took five years from start to finish to build Chelsea Heights, a development of 63 townhouses in downtown Silver Spring.

During that same period of time (2010-2015), Clarksburg added over 2,000 homes and 8,000 residents, according to the American Community Survey. While downtown Silver Spring has added a lot of rental apartments, there are very few homes for sale, pushing house prices up. That forces out anyone who might want to buy a home, sending them to places like Clarksburg instead.

And that has consequences. This development gobbles up farmland and creates pollution. It requires people to drive long distances to work and other activities. And it requires millions of dollars in public spending to build new roads, schools, and fire stations.

If we as a county don't want to bear those costs, we have to make it easier for people to live closer in. That means neighbors can't keep fighting new homes in their neighborhood. And it means allowing new homes in a variety of types and styles and price ranges. That's one thing Clarksburg is really good at.

]]>Mon, 21 Aug 2017 16:08:00 +0000Dan Reed (Editorial Board)Thanks to everyone who joined us for happy hour this week!https://ggwash.org/view/64479/recap-of-last-tuesdays-happy-hour
https://ggwash.org/view/64479/recap-of-last-tuesdays-happy-hour

Thanks to everyone who came to our last happy hour on Tuesday! As many of you know, it was a special happy hour for me, as we also celebrated the eleventh anniversary of my blog about Silver Spring and eastern Montgomery County, Just Up The Pike.

Over a hundred people packed the rooftop at Kaldi's Social House in downtown Silver Spring for a special joint happy hour. On top of that, I received a proclamation from the Montgomery County Council for my work. At-large County Councilmembers George Leventhal and Roger Berliner, and District 5 Councilmember Tom Hucker were there to present it. (Councilmember Hans RIemer first proposed the proclamation, but he was on vacation and couldn’t attend.)

All three talked about something I’ve tried to do since I started Just Up The Pike in 2006: to help craft a vision for Silver Spring and East County in a way that is both positive and constructive.

“Most people who get involved in civic activism want to stop things,” said Councilmember Leventhal. “Dan wanted to get things done & done better.” Councilmember Hucker, who represents East County, talked about my ongoing focus on social justice issues. “Dan’s blog is the one-two punch of land use and socioeconomic analysis, and has been an advocate for his home all his life,” he said.”

I got a proclamation!

The transformation I’ve written about in Silver Spring is just a microcosm of what we’ve seen across the DC area, and what Greater Greater Washington has chronicled for the past eight years. Now more than ever, I’m proud to be a part of this community.

It was great to see so many Greater Greater Washington and Just Up The Pike readers, as well as my friends and neighbors, enjoying the warm weather and the views of downtown Silver Spring from the rooftop. I can’t tell you how much it meant to see all of you there.

Keep an eye out for our next happy hour next month, when we head to Park View for the first time!

Top image: I address the crowd at our happy hour at Kaldi's Social House in Silver Spring. Image by Aaron Landry used with permission.